Encircle the Turtle: An Addictive Arcade Game for iPhone

When I first looked at Encircle the Turtle, the childish fonts and graphics put me off. One review caught my eye: ‘so much better than Angry Birds!’ screamed the review and I thought I should give it a try.

I did. And it reminds me of the old adage of not judging a book by its cover.

Encircle the Turtle is a simple game. You are supposed to block a turtle from reaching any of the corners of the board (map). It’s a brainy game involving a few moves that will decide who the winner is: the “encircler” or the turtle. As simple as it sounds, it’s so addictive that it’s taking me everything to keep away from the game and write about it.

The game lets you pick the character: you can either be the “encircler” who traps the turtle through red-blocks or be the turtle and escape being encircled by the computer.

You have three options:

Play a campaign consisting of 10 games (various maps)

Play a single-player game with the iPhone as the other player

Play a two-player game with your friend (pass and play)

As such, the game is not expansive and feature-packed like a lot of arcade games these days. It’s very simple to describe but once you begin to play, you get addicted. You get to flex your grey matter when you play the game.

What Does the Game Feature

1). I think the most interesting thing is that you can either play the turtle and escape the blocks or play the villain who places the blocks. This one feature makes the game twice as interesting as it’d be if you get to play just one of the characters.

2). Campaign: a really good exercise for the brains. The campaigns go on increasing difficulty with the design of the map. Also, the lesser moves you use up before finishing the game, the more stars you earn.

3). 2 Player mode: it sure is interesting to play the game all on your own but when you’ve got another friend and you want to play the game with him/her, the two player mode comes in handy. Quite a lot of games have this feature, yes, but the developer has been smart to include this feature here.

The best of all, Encircle the Turtle is free. Even if you’re a stickler to HQ graphics and better typography, you should put your rule down and try this game. It’s perfect.